Cloudflare's stock fell 3.01% and hit a 20-day low amid positive market conditions, with the Nasdaq-100 and S&P 500 both up over 0.5%.
The decline in Cloudflare's stock comes despite the announcement of its acquisition of Human Native, an AI data marketplace, aimed at improving transactions between AI developers and content creators. CEO Matthew Prince highlighted that this acquisition will enhance creators' rights and revenue, establishing a transparent economic model for content monetization. The market reacted positively to the acquisition, but the stock's performance indicates a sector rotation as investors reassess their positions in tech stocks.
This acquisition is expected to strengthen Cloudflare's position in the AI sector, potentially attracting more investor interest. However, the stock's current decline suggests that market sentiment may be shifting, prompting a reevaluation of tech investments.
Wall Street analysts forecast NET stock price to rise over the next 12 months. According to Wall Street analysts, the average 1-year price target for NET is 253.24 USD with a low forecast of 131.00 USD and a high forecast of 318.00 USD. However, analyst price targets are subjective and often lag stock prices, so investors should focus on the objective reasons behind analyst rating changes, which better reflect the company's fundamentals.
25 Analyst Rating
Wall Street analysts forecast NET stock price to rise over the next 12 months. According to Wall Street analysts, the average 1-year price target for NET is 253.24 USD with a low forecast of 131.00 USD and a high forecast of 318.00 USD. However, analyst price targets are subjective and often lag stock prices, so investors should focus on the objective reasons behind analyst rating changes, which better reflect the company's fundamentals.
15 Buy
10 Hold
0 Sell
Moderate Buy
Current: 184.880
Low
131.00
Averages
253.24
High
318.00
Current: 184.880
Low
131.00
Averages
253.24
High
318.00
TD Cowen
TD Cowen
Buy
maintain
$265
2026-01-27
New
Reason
TD Cowen
TD Cowen
Price Target
$265
AI Analysis
2026-01-27
New
maintain
Buy
Reason
TD Cowen attributes the premarket rally in shares of Cloudflare to increasing awareness of the company's role in AI infrastructure due to social media discussions related to an open source AI assistant built on Anthropic's Claude model, Clawdbot. Following a weekend of online discussion around Clawdbot, investors appear to have associated the momentum behind the tool with Cloudflare's infrastructure solutions commonly used to deploy and secure agents, the analyst tells investors in a research note. TD says the Cloudflare Tunnel allows developers to connect locally run tools such as AI agents on the internet without exposing their servers. The firm reiterates a Buy rating on the shares with a $265 price target. The stock in premarket trading is up 13%, or $23.86, to $213.21.
RBC Capital
Matthew Hedberg
Outperform
maintain
$265
2026-01-27
New
Reason
RBC Capital
Matthew Hedberg
Price Target
$265
2026-01-27
New
maintain
Outperform
Reason
RBC Capital analyst Matthew Hedberg attributes the recent rally in shares of Cloudflare to investors making a "derivative call" around an increase in AI workloads, including Anthropic's Claude Code and Cowork as well as a new open-source AI assistant, Clawdbot. While Anthropic's Claude Code and Cowork as well as Clawdbot are "not likely needle movers" for Cloudflare in the short-term, the continued growth of AI agents benefits Cloudflare and its Workers platform, the analyst tells investors in a research note. RBC believes Cloudflare is a "Tier 1 AI winner through its inferencing opportunity, Workers platform, and more recently its pay-per-crawl opportunity." It keeps an Outperform rating on the shares with a $265 price target. The stock in early trading is up 13% to $214.33.
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Wolfe Research
Joshua Tilton
Peer Perform
maintain
2026-01-26
New
Reason
Wolfe Research
Joshua Tilton
Price Target
2026-01-26
New
maintain
Peer Perform
Reason
Wolfe Research analyst Joshua Tilton reiterated a Peer Perform rating on Cloudflare following the launch of viral AI assistant Clawdbot over the weekend, which "flowed through" to Cloudflare shares rising over 10%. Clawdbot is an open-source AI agent built on Anthropic's Claude, serving essentially as an AI employee that runs locally on a user's device and executes tasks autonomously, the analyst tells investors in a research note. The firm noted that the connection to Cloudflare is that as these agents scale, they require secure, low-latency infrastructure, and Cloudflare's global edge network is well-suited to support that.
Mizuho
Outperform
to
NULL
downgrade
$280 -> $255
2026-01-21
Reason
Mizuho
Price Target
$280 -> $255
2026-01-21
downgrade
Outperform
to
NULL
Reason
Mizuho lowered the firm's price target on Cloudflare to $255 from $280 and keeps an Outperform rating on the shares. The firm adjusted targets in large-cap software as part of a Q4 earnings preview. Channel checks were solid overall, with public cloud data points were "generally good" and AI adoption "very strong," the analyst tells investors in a research note. However, Mizuho says some of its checks noted more moderate budget flush activity than usual. In addition, growing investor concerns about AI disruption :continue to decimate many software company multiples," the firm contends. It cites recent multiple compression for the target cuts.
About NET
Cloudflare, Inc. is a connectivity cloud company. Its full suite of products consists of its website and application services to deliver security, performance, and reliability for an organization's websites, applications, and application programming interfaces (APIs); its secure access service edge (SASE) platform, which contains its suite of Zero Trust and network services solutions to help ensure traffic in and out of an organization’s internal network and devices is verified and authorized as well as to securely connect data centers, cloud services, and branch offices to an organization with its Connectivity Cloud; its developer-based solutions to build and deploy serverless applications with scale, performance, security and reliability, and its consumer offerings. Its website and application security product offerings include Web Application Firewall, Bot Management, Distributed Denial of Service Protection, API Security, SSL/TLS Encryption, Script Management, and Security Center.
About the author
Emily J. Thompson
Emily J. Thompson, a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) with 12 years in investment research, graduated with honors from the Wharton School. Specializing in industrial and technology stocks, she provides in-depth analysis for Intellectia’s earnings and market brief reports.
